Marissa Mayer becomes CEO of Yahoo and proves women cannot have it all

Today’s news: Marissa Mayer was just appointed CEO at Yahoo. She is a very early employee at Google,  Silicon Valley icon, and she’s six months pregnant. She has announced she’ll take only two weeks maternity leave.

My reaction: I’m so sick of people saying that women like Marissa Mayer are trailblazers when they take on huge corporate responsibility instead of taking care of young kids at home. Leaving kids at home so you can do a big job at the office is old news. People have been doing it for decades.

Marissa Mayer is very Sheryl Sandberg: smart, driven, hard working, a high achiever. She represents all the things that we celebrate in our culture.

Do you know what we do not celebrate? Staying home with kids. There are no official titles or pay scales. It’s disappointing to women who don’t have kids to watch another woman with a fascinating, fun career leave that career to take care of her kids. It scares the women who don’t have kids. No one aspires to be the woman who dumps a great career to step out of the spotlight.

Here are some samples from the media reporting on Marissa Mayer:

• “What a role model,” writes Claire Cain Miller for the New York Times. “By taking such a powerful leadership role while she is pregnant, Ms. Mayer, who has always been outspoken about encouraging girls to study computer science and pursue technology jobs, is becoming an example in the mold of Sheryl Sandberg.”

• “We think this is a first,” notes Colleen Taylor forTechCrunch. “It’s hard to think of a time when a CEO of a major listed tech company has gone on maternity leave. It could certainly be a trailblazing turn.”

• Writing for the Atlantic Wire, Dashiell Bennett writes in the Atlantic Wire, “she’s not just fighting for all women, she’s fighting for all the moms out there too. It doesn’t take a giant leap of imagination to see that Mayer will now become the poster mom for the ‘can women have it all?’ debate.”

Why do we celebrate Mayer’s decision? Why does Mayer fight for all women? You know why people don’t like to hire pregnant women? Because it is completely normal to have a new baby and be so consumed by the new baby that you divert lots of energy to that baby. In fact, it would be abnormal to not divert a significant amount of energy to a new baby.

So why do we celebrate women who are aberrations? Clearly only a minority of women could even dream of making the choice to take two weeks maternity leave when they have enough resources to take much more. Her decision is an anomalous decision.

The most revolutionary thing you can do for women right now is to stop celebrating women who choose to work 120 hours a week when they have a new baby. It’s been forty years since we have been able to say publicly that someone needs to stay home with a baby, forty years of feminism rammed down everyone’s throat. We need new ideas for the lives of women. Women should be able to be celebrated for making a wide range of choices. If Marissa Mayer stepped down to take care of her baby, would people say Marissa Mayer is a poster girl?

Women are driven to take care of children. Pew Research reports that the majority of women would like to work part-time, not full-time. This is important information because it means the role model for women will work part-time. The media needs to stop pretending that women want huge jobs while they are raising kids. It is not interesting to discuss what Marissa Mayer will do as a mom. Given the choice, very few women would ever choose to go back to work after two weeks.

On top of that, Mayer has never even had a baby before. So we now have a spokesperson for mothers at work who has never even been a mother. And if she goes back to work two weeks after she has a baby, she will have very little sense of what being a mom is like in the way that most of us are being moms—that is, sapping our energy for our kids. You can’t do that in a job like running Yahoo. A person does not have that kind of energy.

You can have kids and not let them sap your energy. It can be done. Very few women would want it, so why do we bother talking about it as something inspirational? The media is stuck in the 1970s. Reporting about women in business is stuck in the 1970s. I’m bored by it and you should be too.

What should we be interested in? What is not 1972 all over again? Here are tactics for a post-feminist generation:

1. Marry rich and spend your husband’s money to fund your own startup so you have a part-time job after you have kids. The poster-girl for this is Fred Wilson’s wife who is now an investor. But tons of VCs I know have told me about “my wife’s new app” and almost everyone I know in this position does not want to be called out for it. But it’s all over the place.

2. Go back to school when you have young kids to get a PhD. Not because you’ll do anything with it, but because you’ve been a high-achieving intellectual your whole life and the lack of an endgame for raising kids is disconcerting. So you create a goal for yourself that is manageable while you have kids and you meet it. This also serves to present you with a wide array of fascinating conversations with smart people, which is totally lacking in the world of small kids all day long.

3. Have kids very early. When you’re 25. Really. I think it will work. Women who do that are in a great position to ramp up their career during their 40s, when their kids are gone. Having kids early avoids the difficult pattern of building a career, scaling back a career, and building all over again. Having kids early means you only ramp up once.

4. Quit and stay at a big job. This is when you don’t leave your big job physically, but you do it in your sleep. Literally. You cut back on your hours without getting permission, which you can do because you were working 14 hour days before the baby. You do not initiate new projects, you refuse almost all travel, and you don’t ask for a raise. You see how long you can stay in the high-level job and spend time with your baby and not get fired. Eventually, people will either write you off as dead corporate wood and leave you alone at work, or they will fire you. Either way, it’s a good way to see if you can hold on to the rung you climbed up to and still take care of your kids as much as you want to. Look around the office. You’ll see tons of women doing quit and stay. They’re waiting until their kids get older and then they’ll switch jobs and ramp up and go back to climbing the ladder.

These are just four examples. I see a lot more. There are a lot of innovations from women at work who are determined to take care of kids and have an interesting life at the same time.

And now is a great time to plug my new book: The New American Dream: Blueprint for a New Path to Success. Because the new American Dream is about having an interesting life, not making a lot of money. And women who have kids want to have a part of that dream. We don’t want to get left behind intellectually; we want to be part of all the innovation going on in the world. It’s old-fashioned to think this means we have to leave a newborn baby in someone else’s arms to go back to work and run companies.

 

348 replies
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  1. legal_memories
    legal_memories says:

    I wanted to scream “Yes, yes, yes!” as I read your post today. This is exactly how I felt about the Melissa Mayer’s announcement. I keep thinking, how depressing, I mean if a woman CEO can’t take a maternity leave, then we really haven’t moved forward at all.

    But. . . I do think it is trailblazing for a board of directors to hire a pregnant woman. That is progress. Whether her approach to it is progress in a direction that is good for women and good for families remains to be seen, but it is something.

    I love the “quit and stay” idea.

  2. Bethany
    Bethany says:

    What Yahoo did by hiring a PREGNANT FEMALE as CEO is not trailblazing, it’s brilliant.

    A company afraid of falling off the map creating a big time public controversy (read: buzz) is, in my book, good business. This is strategic. Whether you like it, love it, cheer it or boo it, you heard the name Yahoo.

  3. Rose
    Rose says:

    This woman is doing what many if not most women have to do but with more resources. I want the Scandanavian model. I don’t think the current US system really offers a reasonable choice to most men or women. Most of us are doing what we have to and not what’s best for ourselves, our spouses, our children, our society, or our workplace.
    I don’t think feminism was supposed to be you have to do everything a man does, oh, and you still have to be a martyr of womanhood and keep up with all of that baby raising, house cleaning, and keeping your looks up too. If I’m bringing home the bacon, someone else is damn well going to fry it up in a pan–take out anyone?, and you are just going to have to remember you are a man without constant reminders.
    Love the concept of an interesting life and The New American Dream, but I’m still kinda dreaming of Sweden.

  4. Kathy
    Kathy says:

    As my mother used to say, “What’s good for the goose is not always what’s good for the gander. We all make choices involving family and jobs. That’s why is called a “Choice”. Why can’t we have it all? I think part of the problem in today’s society is that we compare to much….Make it simple.

    • me
      me says:

      Are you seriously linking to a study that appears in one of the worst newspaper-looking tabloïds?!

  5. Drew Merten
    Drew Merten says:

    I just wanted to say great post. (No, I didn’t read all 299 comments. Sorry :)) I’m a firm believer in not letting someone else raise your kids. My mother stayed at home and raised seven boys. before that, she was a career woman, but decided raising her children was more important. She didn’t leave us to be raised by a baby sitter, nanny, or public school system. My brothers and their wives all have kids and some of them even have part time businesses, something they can do from home and even involve the children in. I’ve been told by more than one woman that my wife is extremely lucky to be able to stay at home. So while I don’t have a problem with women working, I firmly believe a woman should take care of their own. The old ways work best. Commence flaming.

    Drew Merten
    amazon.com/author/drewmerten

  6. Catherine
    Catherine says:

    What a load of tripe – the article, most of the comments in agreement and above all option 1 on your little weird list.
    Its such a load of crap but it unquestionably highlights one thing that’s never going to change – women are women’s worst enemy and biggest challenge. Give me brothers any day of the week if I’ve got ‘sisters’ like the writer of this article and her fans on the comment line.

  7. MJ
    MJ says:

    Personally I don’t understand why Mayer has been held up as any sort of model at all. Two whole weeks is not maternity leave, it’s a vacation. With all the help she can afford, she’ll probably spend more time in the first six months with her personal trainer than she will with the baby. This is not a situation most women can or should aspire to!!!!

    But I liked what you said about “There are a lot of innovations from women at work who are determined to take care of kids and have an interesting life at the same time.” I just discovered Candra at Neverpink.com, and if her about page is to be believed, she seems to have something figured out… she runs a company and homeschools her kids. We need to hear about more of these kinds of women.

    It’s also true what you said about Quit and Stay. I’ve been listing to the audio version of the book Opting Out, and many of the women in that book tried this route and ended up having to quit before being shoved out. They found various ways to rationalize their decision as their ‘choice’ but it was basically quit or leave. Sad.

  8. Marina K. Villatoro
    Marina K. Villatoro says:

    I’m with Penelope on this one!

    She should have made the choice of not having a child that will be neglected and not have a mom.

    She is DEFINITELY not a trailblazer for mother hood.

    I’m a work at home mom and find that to be too hard to spend the time i want with my kids, she will be just like the lovely ‘trailblazing’ non mother from Facebook too!

    Yahoo will have ‘say good night’ to your mom five minutes now too.

  9. Paul Neubauer
    Paul Neubauer says:

    “Quit and stay at a big job. This is when you don’t leave your big job physically, but …”

    In other words firing a woman who is pregnant is perfectly valid and rational, and in the best interests of the child. Or, save yourself the headaches and don’t hire her in the first place, at least for any significant position.

    I can’t imagine giving advice like this to men, they’d starve to death. Our society has such an in-depth support system for women that this kind of advice, and the proceeding advice, is actually valid for them.

    There are so many blogs with women discussing how reasonable it would be for them to have 12 month leaves from work for child care it almost seems an entitlement. What man could do that?

    It boils do to the fact that reproduction is too significant to be ignored and the efforts to make men and women the same is fruitless and destructive.

  10. Lori
    Lori says:

    I admire Marissa Mayer for succeeding in the tech world, but I too question her decision of 2 weeks maternity leave. This is not “having it all” – the baby will get the shaft, no doubt at all. Babies need their moms.

    Not to brag (well, I guess I’m bragging a little), but I homeschool my kids and have an online business that I do from home, out-earning my executive husband. I really, truly do have it all. It can be done.

  11. Marcia Norie
    Marcia Norie says:

    To raise a human being, in all of their dimensions,intellectual, physical and transcendental is the most complex and important task in which someone can commit to.Having a career, financial independence can be really important for a woman. In that case, she shouldn’t have children. Do you know why? Because raising a child requires a lot of dedication and a LOT of time, if you want to do your best. This is not a job to do in your free time.Getting straight to the point. A good way to gauge if you’re doing your best for your child is to count the times you’re with them. And that’s just a matter of logic. Nobody wins a Nobel Prize in Physics, being a physicist only in their free time. You won’t be a good parent if your child is not on the top of your priority list.

    • notarealname
      notarealname says:

      “Having a career, financial independence can be really important for a woman. In that case, she shouldn’t have children.”

      Hang on, are you saying that its okay for a man to have a kid and a job at the same time, but not a woman, or are you saying the only people who should have kids are unemployed couples?

      • Marcia Norie
        Marcia Norie says:

        I meant what I said. Since only women can breastfeed (as I’m sure you’re aware of) this is a responsibility only women can take. SOMEONE has to earn money, just not the mother for at least the first five year of the child’s life. And one more thing, raising a child is the most important commitment that a person may choose, but it’s not for everyone.

        • Help4NewMoms
          Help4NewMoms says:

          Ahhh..but you forget that a mother can pump enough breast milk to feed her baby everyday with a bottle…so there is a way to be a mom, a breastfeeder and a professional. I know women who have done this. Also, you say,”Nobody wins a Nobel Prize in Physics, being a physicist only in their free time.” Did you know that Madame Curie, winner of the Nobel prize in Physics and discoverer of Radium, was a mother of two daughters, one of whom went on to continue her mother’s work!

  12. kristen
    kristen says:

    A different take on it from a totally different blog. Worth a read.
    http://www.momastery.com

    “2.No one can have it all and people should just stop saying that already. I just listened to a woman give a speech the other day about how you CAN have it all. You can be a GREAT MOM and a SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSWOMAN and a SEXPOT with your husband and a SOCIAL BUTTERFLY and THERE! You have it all! (Apparently, those four things are It All) IIIIIIII have it all, she said. Look at me! If I can do it, so can you! I watched her dispassionately, eating my gigantic bowl of popcorn. I’m sure she meant well, but I kept thinking: you don’t have it all, lady. For example: you’re not a fisherman. Fishermen get up before sunrise and pull on their plastic gear and head out onto the bay before anyone in the whole world has woken up. They glide through the water and they sit, and they wait, and they work, and they watch the sun rise over the water and they say good morning to God first. And that is their slice of happiness. Made just for them. Not you, not her, not me.

    Each of us has our own slice of happiness, and nobody, but NOBODY, gets the whole happiness pie. After Rebecca Sono won her second gold medal, she said that her strategy was to “keep her mind in her own lane and not worry about what the others are doing.” Brilliant, Rebecca. We just get our own lane and there is enough brutal and beautiful ahead of and behind us. You can’t have her lane and she can’t have yours. Nobody has it all. We each just have our own lane of the big old pool and our own slice of the happiness pie, and that is quite enough. Others will have things and experiences and successes that weren’t meant for us. Vice versa. Good design. I don’t want it all. I’m sufficiently enthralled and exhausted just finishing my own lap in my own lane, thank you very much.”

  13. Anastasia @ eco-babyz
    Anastasia @ eco-babyz says:

    I doubt you actually have the time to read all these comments, but anyway :) I had my bachelor’s in Interior Design, got married, worked in the field for 3 years and had a sigh of relief when I was 25, had a baby, and they told me they don’t need me anymore. I was laid off in 2009. I frankly never want to go back! I love being home with kids. I found a new love as a part-time Social Media Manager for a small local business, working out of my home. It’s perfect for us! A little side income AND I get to be with the kids. I think I just realized that’s what I dreamed of, after I typed it all out lol. :) Now I have two children, and I can’t imagine leaving for work every day and leaving them with someone else. It just seems wrong. Maybe that’s just me, but I think you get it :)

  14. Paulina
    Paulina says:

    I haven’t read every comment b/c I’m lazy, but I totally agree with you. I was always very good in my academic career until I graduated and moved abroad. Now, I find myself very confused between what I should do and what I would like to do. I would love to take care of a family and have a part time job that I enjoyed, but then the other half keep telling me that all women fought for me to achieve more than ‘just’ a happy family that I can’t get myself happy about my decisions.

    ANYWAY, thanks for the post. I’m tired of the old feminism idea that staying home is abiding by old society rules. I think family should be important too and the woman job in the family should also be considered hard and be recognized.

  15. Amber Carter
    Amber Carter says:

    Initially I agree with Penelope. I believe it is her choice if she would like to return to work after only two weeks on maternity leave however I also agree with other commentators who believe this time does not allow her much time spent as a mother with her child. Now days it is common for women to balance a large career as well as being a mother at home to children. However nobody said it was easy task. I admire Mayer’s ambition and drive.

  16. benny
    benny says:

    How can you say that you will only take 2 weeks off and go back to work? First she has no idea. You do not plan how birth will happen those high career womens think they are in control of everything. What are we teaching our daughters. It is time for women to try to stop to be perfect. It is a concept that male inflicted on us to divide us. I do not want to teach my daughter that she has to be a super women to succeed for my part I had a ceasearian and was in hospital for 2 weeks and it wasn’t part of my birth plans but I had no say in it that what happen and you have to deal with it. I lost a lot of blood, had an emergency ceasearian and after 4 weeks I was still unable to drive. Hubby had to take 4 weeks off to help with the baby. We don’t have any family around and any way I wouldn’t want any stranger to look after my baby. Time to stop being so competitive ladies, look around you stop trying to act like men. If this CEO yahoo only men if they are understanding and wanting her to be a CEO than they will give her the time to look after her children, and she wouldn’t feel pressured into having to go back to work so soon. I guess once she have the baby she might changed her mind. She should not feel pressured that she has to give up work but she should not try to attain the impossible Why? Because the bias are very strong. If the CEO was only women they would be no problem, they would understand the consequences of having children. Personnally I feel sorry for her and would not want to be in her shoes. I have two daughters and will encourage them to become tech savy but family comes first and if the company that rules I will tell them to look for one who do

  17. notarealname
    notarealname says:

    Having or raising kids isn’t an integral part of being a woman.

    Don’t parrot that sexist nonsense just to justify your own decisions.

    If a male CEO took 0 weeks off after the birth of a kid, no one would bat an eye. Few people would say he couldn’t be a proper father and have a full time job at the same time.

    It’s worrying that you don’t see the huge sexist double standard in this, and that your idea of “post-feminism” seems to be focussing on the idea that successful woman should be a child raiser first and anything else second.

    Get a PHD (not to actually do anything with), but just so you don’t have to feel bad about not doing anything but having a kid.

    I respect women who think they can have kids and not have to give up their work to be a good parent far more than your twisted self-centred ideology.

  18. kc
    kc says:

    It’s funny that one of your bullets says to get a PhD. Haven’t you been against advanced degrees in many of your posts? There are many other ways to gain personal acheivement outside of a stupid PhD program that you will never use. Don’t waste time AND money for goodness sake!

  19. Euro Girl
    Euro Girl says:

    I don’t usually comment, although I’m an avid PT reader – I’ve been following Penelope’s comments about the “work-life” (i.e. kids + work) balance with special interest.

    In the past I’ve always thought, hey, I’m making it work, I have a high-powered job and a kid, but looking over this list, I have to admit it – I’m pulling the #4. I work 8:30 to 4:30 (often with an hour lunch break to exercise), only work after hours or on weekends when absolutely necessary (like, maybe 2 hours total a month?), and plan to continue to hold onto this job until the kid(s) (I’m pregnant with my second) have gotten older and I can focus on my career again.

    To be fair, I also have a husband who actually does more than 50% of the childcare/housekeeping, a bi-weekly cleaner so I don’t have to spend my weekends cleaning, AND – and this may be key – I live in Europe where the policies are easier to use (abuse?) – 30 days paid vacation, 5 days on top of that per year to care for a sick child, and basically unlimited sick leave.

    When the second child arrives this summer, I will have 3 full months off followed by another 9 months working part-time from home.

    And honestly? I don’t feel bad. I know I could be making more money elsewhere, my company knows it too, so the way they get to keep someone with my skills and expertise is to let me work as I do. I think it is a fair deal all around.

  20. Sara Skeutar
    Sara Skeutar says:

    How about adding decision-making power, access to more opportunities, and all-around equality? What you’ve basically said with your post is: “Women have it damn good in the home. Why the hell are you asking for more?” Why are women biting the hand that feeds them (men)–that’s what you’re wondering, correct?

    You’re missing the point. I *highly* suggest you watch Sheryl Sandberg’s talk on all this: http://www.ted.com/talks/sheryl_sandberg_why_we_have_too_few_women_leaders.html Reproduction should be a partnership. Women, more often than not, are relegated to the home. There is a social stigma regarding stay-at-home dads (so they don’t), so time after time women are forced to give up their careers in order to take on the majority of the child-rearing duties. Quite often, there is not an equal distribution of duties across the sexes.

    Let me give you an example of a country where there IS more equality: Norway, where both mother and father are *equally* granted up to 57 weeks of federally-sponsored paternity leave. No one parent needs to sacrifice his or her job/career in order to stay with the child during that highly important and formative first year. Gender roles are redefined. The child benefits from having both parents around: http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/Modern-Parenthood/2012/1112/Norway-and-paternity-leave-Father-s-day-of-a-different-kind

    “When women give up the monopoly on reproduction, and its attendant privileges, protections and entitlements, then maybe there could be some measure of change.” I’m tickled by how you’ve swapped around the rhetoric on this one, as if women rule the home and won’t let go. Have you read the post you’re commenting on? (and more importantly, have you read the articles which this post is responding to?) There should be less stigma about men being equal partners in the home. This is about equality. Could it be possible that when a woman (a mother) takes a man (the father) to court for half his earnings, she is fighting for her lost *potential* earnings? A woman sacrifices much for her children — and it should be her decision to do so, not one directed by social pressures.

    “If you look at divorce court statistics and dating site entries, you can get a good objective feel for what women really want.” Now, Paul, this sounds like a suspiciously personal (biased) observation on your part. Give me a study and some real numbers, not your personal slice of experience.

    Why do we need more women striving for more? Well, why do we need more people in *any* field? The answer is: because we need progress. In order for that to happen, we need every capable, passionate human being in the running. If our savior is a woman, we might not ever know because social constraints have kept her from reaching her true potential.

    “But ask, why do we have a child bearing gender? Why have we had this nearly century long effort to change this?” Paul, “child bearing” and “child rearing” are two entirely different subjects. To be clear, we’re talking about equal partnership in “child rearing.” And why have we had this century-long effort to change this? Or let me rephrase: why have we had this century-long effort to empower and afford more opportunities to women? The answer, again, is equality.

    Again, I highly recommend everyone watch Sherl Sandberg’s TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/sheryl_sandberg_why_we_have_too_few_women_leaders.html

    • Help4NewMoms
      Help4NewMoms says:

      While I absolutely agree that it would be awfully nice if there were some equality between men and women in childcare/housework and it would be terrific and beneficial for Moms who would like to continue in their professions to do so, I worry about the example you cite in Norway.

      When you mentioned “federally funded” that means the taxpayers pay. Norway has one of the highest tax rates in the world AND has a value-added on tax on top of this. It is one of the biggest “welfare” states in the world. While I agree that there has to be a better way, We can’t lose our freedom to do it. I am going to check out the link you cite on Sheryl Sandberg.

  21. Peter Simonetti
    Peter Simonetti says:

    I’d once read that, early in his career, Ted Koppel actually stopped working to take care of his children, while his wife went-out to develop her career. In short, they shared both responsibilities of “bread-winning” and child rearing.

    In a family with two parents, this seems pretty ideal. I don’t think it matters *who* stays home with the kids, but one of the parents should. It makes an enormous difference in how they grow.

    For single parents like me, unfortunately, we are forced to delegate some of the responsibility for child care, because we must work. But if I could figure-out a way to better straddle both worlds, I would.

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